Killing Ground (2016) Dir. Damien Power A young couple goes to a secluded camping spot in the wood. On the same small stretch of the riverbank where they have set up their tent, there is also another tent, which is vacant. At first, the couple thinks that the other campers are just out hiking for the day, but when a day and a night passes without any sight of their 'neighbors', they decide to inspect the other tent more closely and they find signs of a struggle inside. An Australian hillbilly horror/survival horror film. Not bad. It's low budget but it makes the most of what it has. It's also an example of an effective use of the dual time lines narrative form. Here it actually adds to the terror in the way the two time lines are merged together and thus it isn't just a gimmick that is ultimately distracting. It is an integral prat of the dramatic arc. Aaron Petersen and Aaron Glenane play a pair of genuinely terrifying psychopaths.
I tried this season....it’s still sitting in my queue...it’s not that I don’t want to watch it, it’s just not one of those shows that pushes all my other shows to the back of the line..
The Gorgon (1964) Dir. Terence Fisher In a small village in early 20th century Germany, there have been a series of weird murders in which the victim is found petrified. The police chief and the local coroner conspire to cover up the weird, seemingly supernatural nature of the crimes. When a young artist who is a visitor in the village becomes the latest victim along with his fiancée, a local girl, his father comes to investigate and refuses to believe the story that the authorities try to convince him of. Instead he investigates the crime on his own and comes upon an ancient local legend in which a Gorgon, one of Medusa's surviving sisters, has made a local abandoned castle her home. Nice little Hammer Horror film. Cushing, Lee, Pasco and Shelley are all great. Christopher Lee especially is terrific in this. Just the little scene in which he breaks into the asylum is great fun on its own. The movie is limited to a handful of locations, but the sets are nice and rich for a picture of its budget.
Atomic Blonde (2017) Dir. David Leitch On the eve of the fall of the Berlin wall, an MI6 operative in Berlin is killed whilst carrying a list of foreign operatives contained within a microfilm hidden in a watch. The man who has stolen the list is a Russian operative who has gone rogue. MI6 send in a skilled female field agent to retrieve the list and find out who killed their agent. Upon arriving in Berlin, her cover is almost immediately blown, which leads to her concluding that she cannot trust anyone, not even MI6's unconventional station head in Berlin. I wouldn't say that this movie can boast having a brilliant espionage screenplay by any means, but the film contained enough stuff that I liked for me to deem it good. Charlize Theron is very enjoyable in the lead role, in spite of her slightly weird accent. The much hyped staircase fight scene is genuinely great. The soundtrack is a 1980s cliché, but in the best possible way ("Blue Monday", "Major Tom", two versions of "99 Luftballon", "Under Pressure", ...). I do feel like the hook-up scene with Sophia Boutella's character was shoe-horned in a bit to make it a topic of discussion. It's not a bad scene in and of itself, but it's not clear what the point of that entire subplot is beyond serving as a chance to give the audience some girl-on-girl action.
Wild Card (2015) Nick Wild, former heavy gambler, makes a sort-of living being a (legal) (usually) tough guy for hire in Las Vegas. He is guilted into helping a woman friend get revenge on a scummy mob-adjacent guy that did a number on her. Now Nick needs to skip town. To do that he needs money. I wonder were you can get lots of money quickly in Sin City. A weird film. I think it's a pretty bad movie, but it really gets stuck in the head. A larger section of the film is devoted to blackjack than fighting, and the gambling is utterly boring and unbelievable. But it ends up making a point about the self-destructive tendencies of human nature - it's not that Nick was going to lose his money, but that he was not able to not lose his money, if you get my meaning. And there is this unusual emphasis on reputations and believability, like it was written pre-Enlightenment. Nick has a certain fame based on his reputation, and he uses that reputation to defend himself in the "trial". The scumbag tries to pin Nick for a crime he did to protect his own reputation. And there is this game that the scumbag and the victim both play about being convincing. Yeah, I'm really thinking about things now. Like I said, I think it's a pretty good movie. Kind of gory, though. Like the Christmas music.
The Circle (2017) Mae gets hired at The Circle - a Facebookish all-encompassing Internet organization - to be a low level customer support person. Soon after she is hired they announce their new product "SeeChange" - extremely cheap camera/sensor devices the size of a die. These are going to be placed everywhere watching everything. When the pressures of social media get too much for Mae, she breaks into a Sausalito kayak rental place, steals a kayak, and paddles out, where she gets swamped by a ferry. She is immediately rescued because her movements were tracked by some of the few SeeChange cameras not placed in women's bathrooms. The next day she talks to the head of The Circle and becomes a The Circle test subject - a "transparent" person, with everything she does and says and writes being transmitted to the web. She is then promoted to be the poster child of the next project - making everyone transparentish, whether they want to or not. It ends in a very predictable tragedy. Can Mae find a deus-ex-machina way to get revenge on the The Circle CEO in the scant few minutes before the credits roll? There's an app for that. We got the bad end of the film. This could have been interesting if it was centered on the boardroom dealings of the people in charge of The Circle - why were they doing what they did? Or it could have been better if it was just the social media stuff - a sickening extrapolation of the future (or maybe it's already today - I don't know what the heck is going on). So much time was spent on Mae's personal life and too little on the tech and the repercussions of the tech and the forces driving the tech. There are too many big political issues just touched on. And why does she go to Sausalito to kayak? There are rental places on the Peninsula (The Circle is based close to where real-life Facebook is, off the Dumbarton Bridge). And it's nicer in the wetlands instead of among the houseboats. If you want social media commentary, you are better off watching the 7th episode of The Orville.
The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017) Dir. Patrick Hughes Two years after a spectacularly botched job ruined the career of a formerly high-end security expert, he is given a call by his ex-girlfriend, an Interpol agent who has gotten in a bit of a bind during an prisoner escort assignment. Her entire team has been taken out in an ambush and she needs help getting a convicted contract killer to The Hague where he is set to testify against an Eastern-European dictator accused of war crimes. His testimony is meant to be the key bit of evidence in convicting the man, thus the dictator has an army of thugs ready to prevent the witness of ever reaching The Hague. I found this surprisingly enjoyable. Its 39% rating on Rottentomatoes confuses me. This is meant to be a silly action comedy and it does exactly what it says on the tin. The few issues I had with it were minor. The first of those is that I don't think they were fully committed to the tone throughout the film, which makes some scenes work better than others. The other minor issue is that Ryan Reynolds is meant to be the straight man in his comedic pairing with Samuel L. Jackson and we know from "Deadpool" that he is most effective when he can go full Reynolds. But there is lot to like here. Apart from the two leads, there are good actors in supporting roles, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek and Elodie Yung (whom "Daredevil" fans will remember from season two). Reynolds and Jackson make for a genuinely funny on-screen duo. And the cross-cutting action scene on the roads of The Hague is definitely one of the better such sequences I've seen in recent memory.
Colossal (2017) Out of work and constantly drunk because of it Gloria is finally given the boot by her passive-aggressive boyfriend. She returns to her (very empty) parents house in small-town New Hampshire, where she finds a drinking companion and employer in her old elementary school pal Oscar. Oscar, a real nice guy, helps furnish her place. But she's so out of it she missed the big news of the day - a giant Godzilla-type monster is wrecking Seoul. But watching the footage later, she realizes the monster was doing all the actions she was doing the previous night... NER_MCFC was right that this seems like it will be a sobriety story at first. It really about powerlessness and disappointment and how people react to that. Drink just happens to be the go-to for the powerless and disappointed. I do think there was a little too much fluff around the center of the movie. If this was an hour long, it would be the best episode of The Twilight Zone ever. But as a movie it's just pretty good.
Wind River (2017) Dir. Taylor Sheridan Whilst out hunting for mountain lines who have been killing cattle, an experienced tracker comes upon the body of a young native American woman. The coroner discovers she was likely raped and then made to run barefoot in night-time, extreme sub-zero conditions until she died. The body was discovered on reservation grounds, so the local police chief calls in the FBI, who send an inexperienced field agent who appears to be completely unprepared for the conditions of the job she will be working. The tracker volunteers to assist her in her investigation, partially because the victim was a close friend of his deceased daughter, who died under similar, unexplained circumstances. A thriller with some mild whodunit tropes, this is decent entertainment, albeit referential. This movie was also accused of needless white-washing and you could make the argument that the Jeremy Renner role would have made more sense had he been played by a native American actor. Thematically this reminded me somewhat of "Thunderheart", though the character played by Jeremy Renner is most reminiscent of Jefferson Cody, the tragic hero played by Randolph Scott in Budd Boetticher's "Comanche Station". Both are wounded men who earn a certain measure of closure and redemption through an act that functions as a proxy of what they truly desired to do at one point. Jon Bernthal has another one of those great cameo roles in which he throws a fastball due to the sheer intensity of his on-screen presence.
Logan Lucky (2017) Dir. Steven Soderbergh The Logan brothers, one a former HS football star who was robbed of his chance at playing in the N.F.L. by blowing out his knee in college, the other his younger sibling who is an Iraq war veteran who lost his arm, decide to rob a motor speedway because their life prospects are so grim. To this end they recruit their hair-salon working sister, who doubles as a great driver and an incarcerated vault expert and his two idiot younger brothers. Their unlikely plan might actually have a chance of succeeding, but are they smart enough to get away with it, in light of their family's history of bad luck? I really liked this. It's basically "Hell or High Water" if it was a comedy heist film made by Steven Soderbergh. There are some hilarious scenes in there (the GRRM discussion at the prison!) and the cast is terrific all around. Adam Driver, Daniel Craig and Riley Keough (a true revelation for me) are the stand-outs in my estimation, but I love the entire ensemble. I didn't even recognize Seth MacFarlane until the credits rolled!
Acts of Vengeance (2017) Dir. Isaac Florentine A hotshot defense lawyer who is famous for getting violent criminals lenient punishments and even acquittals is a workaholic who neglects his family. He is left with nothing but regret and pain after his wife and daughter are murdered on their way back from a talent show at school he was too late to attend due to his job. After going through a tailspin in which he loses his job and tries to drink his sorrow away, he comes upon a copy of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" in the aftermath of a violent incident and it inspires him to investigate his family's murders himself and try to get vigilante justice for them. A revenge thriller/action flick in the "Death Wish" mold. Unfortunately the writing is far too hackneyed to called this even decent. Which is a shame, since the cast is far from terrible for a B-action flick. Banderas, Urban and Vega, as well as a Robert Forster cameo.
Jeune & Jolie (2013) Dir. François Ozon During a Summer vacation, 17-year old Isabelle loses her virginity to a Summer love. Upon her and her family's return to Paris, a chance encounter near her school leads to her decision to start to prostitute herself as an escort. Outside of the knowledge of her mother and step father, she meets various men at hotel rooms all over the city, enjoying the anonymity and sense of detachment she experiences during the act more than the money she makes. Eventually she does grow somewhat attached to an older customer who treats her differently from most johns, but an incident during one of their appointments shakes up her life and threatens to reveal her secret double life. Had this material been in different hands, this could have devolved into a TV movie of the week cautionary tale about vulnerable young women lured into prostitution. In the hands of François Ozon, it becomes far more interesting than that, but the movie owes this mostly to his choice of lead actress: this was a star-marking role for Marine Vacth and rightly so. Her performance requires her character to waver between an innocence that borders on the naive and a nymphish, knowing sensuality, sometimes having to make the switch several times over the course of a single scene without it jarring. As a small side-note, the "à quoi ça sert" montage was a wonderful surprise for me personally, a song I knew from my childhood but hadn't heard in ages. Whoever said that music is the one medium that can take us back to our past in an instant was right.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos Lanthimos doesn't make movies for the faint of heart as evidenced by his earlier films like The Lobster and Kynodontas. This film takes his bold, bizarre, often uncomfortable films up a notch. When this thing was over, there literally was not a peep in the auditorium. People just sat there staring into space. I walked out finally and there was a guy in the hallway cupping his face with both hands in disbelief. I know his films get a lot of mixed reviews by filmgoers, but you can never say they're boring or short of ideas.
The Good Neighbor (2016) Dir. Kasra Farahani A high schooler wants to record a psychological experiment on an unwitting neighbor and he recruits the help of his tech-savvy friend to this end. Together they install cameras and electronic devices all over the home of an ornery, elderly man who lives on their street. The idea is to use the electronics to scare him into believing his house is haunted and then use the cameras to document his change in behavior. They justify their sick little experiment by focusing on how disliked the old man is around the neighborhood for his foul moods and occasionally aggressive interactions with his neighbors. At first the pair are confused by the fact that their mark seems more angry then scared in reaction to their nightly smoke and mirrors show. But then they become truly concerned when they notice the man spends a lot of time, mostly at night, down in his otherwise padlocked basement. With no cameras in that area of the house to see what he is doing down there, it becomes their new obsession to find out the truth about the contents of the basement. This starts out as a 21st century version of "Rear Window" with some "Apt Pupil" thrown in there. But in reality it is something else entirely. It's more a movie about how people project their own expectations and preconceived notions on what they observe. Both the protagonists and the audience are thus misled. It's not a masterpiece, but it's decently well acted by the entire cast, especially a quite impressive James Caan as the elderly neighbor.
Night of the Iguana (1964) Reverend Shannon, locked out of his church and nearly defrocked for certain carnal indiscretions, is now doing the lowest possible job for a man of his profession - he is a religious tour guide in Mexico for a cut-rate operation. He is taking a brood of Baptist school teachers around the various missions of the country, but gets on their bad side because he again succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh, this time with the 17 year old niece of the head teacher. He decides the only way to turn them around is to shanghai the bus and take it to an out-of-the-way hotel run by his friend, hoping a few days on the beach will calm the women's nerves and prevent them from calling his boss and getting him fired. Well, that's the first Tennessee Williams I didn't like. The characters were static, extreme, and unlikable. The miscast Richard Burton did a fine job of Acting!, but it wasn't exactly a subtly written character either.
The Naked Prey (1965) An unnamed safari guide is hired by a self-important client to take him ivory hunting. Their group meets a platoon of local tribals, and the client spurns their request for gifts over the strong protest of the guide. Some time later the tribals return and massacre most of the safari. A few of the top people are taken to the village for a variety of torturous deaths. The guide gets a different fate - stripped naked, he is given a head start before the greatest warriors of the tribe are sent after him. The opening is not pleasant to see. The setup is weak, the client is cartoonish, and the tortures are both horrific to think about and horrifically enacted by the amateur cast. But once it gets into the most dangerous game territory, it gets strangely meditative. The direction is as stripped as the guide - few spoken words, little music besides tribal drumming and chanting, nothing to the story but hunting and being hunted. Can't say it's realistic or enlightening or not a little racist, but a Cornel Wilde and a lot of African wildlife stock footage carry this well enough.
Twin Peaks: The First Two Seasons. Another one of those shows from the late 80s, early 90s that paved the way for the kind of TV we get on cable and streaming services now,. In fact, I remember when it was first on as a 7 episode summer replacement, I said something like "every network should do this: Give movie directors a budget at six to ten hours to do something long form like this." I remember it running out of gas in season two, but so far, it's been eminently binge-worthy. And I have no idea how I didn't knowthist, but both the dancing midget and the prophetic giant had rolls on Star Trek franchises.
His Kind of Woman (1951) Dir. John Farrow A down on his luck gambler gets an offer from a shady underworld figure: in exchange for 50000 dollars, he is to travel to a Mexican sea-side resort and wait for further instructions there. In spite of the fact that the entire business obviously stinks, he accepts, due to his lack of real alternatives. On the chartered plane to Mexico, he meets a beautiful woman, whom he is disappointed to discover is in a relationship with a famous American movie star who is also staying at the Mexican resort. Several other people attract his attention, among them a reclusive writer, a Wall Street type who likes his drink and gambling, a seemingly unhappy young couple and a handful of other people who claim they are one thing but appear to be something else. The situation complicates when a Federal agent arrives in the middle of a stormy night and informs the man that his mission in Mexico has cast him as the patsy in an international conspiracy. I liked this noir a lot, in spite of its chaotic production history which includes several reshoots and recasts and a change of director. Mitchum and Russell have some real chemistry and Vincent Price is terrific as the Hollywood leading man whose life feels unfulfilled. There is also a certain conscious irony about a Hollywood actor being the only person, just about, who is who he claims to be. The movie loses its way a bit during the climax, but I even somewhat enjoyed that silliness, mostly because they had Vincent Price perpetually quoting Shakespeare during an assault on a boat.
Better Watch Out (2016) Dir. Chris Peckover Luke is a soon to be 13 year old who has an infatuation with his babysitter. The babysitter in question will soon be moving out of state for college and her babysitting duties will bring her to Luke's house one last time. Luke is convinced that he can somehow make a successful move on the older, quite popular girl, in spite of his best friend Gareth's misgivings. When the pair of them are home alone, the night is disturbed by someone who is seemingly prowling around the house with the intent of scaring them. Even though the twist comes fairly early on in the movie and when it is revealed, everyone will be able to figure out what happens next, I still thought this was an original little film with good performances, especially by the genuinely creepy Levi Miller. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler Basically this is a movie that explores the popular theory (online anyway) that young Kevin McCallister from the "Home Alone" series is actually a sociopath/psychopath and follows this concept to its narrative extremes.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) Dir. Matthew Vaughn After the events of the first movie, Eggsy is attacked by a familiar failed recruit of the Kingsmen and in the aftermath of this attack, several other Kingsmen are taken out. The remaining members of the organization have no choice but to turn to their American counterparts for help: the so called Statesman. Together they uncover a deadly plot engineered by the woman leading the worlds biggest drug cartel. It seems to be a common trait with these sequels that they decide to go bigger in all departments, but that they lose some of the original film's charm in the process. I thought this was a step down from the first film, though there were still some sequences in there that worked for me. I thought the action sequence set to Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright" was as good as any of the action scenes in the first film. I found it amusing that this is the second Channing Tatum movie I've seen in quick succession in which a cast member sings John Denver's "Take me Home, Country Road", the other being "Logan Lucky". The stuff I didn't like was the fact that they added so many new characters that they couldn't possibly do all of them justice and the fact that Roxy, one of my favorite characters of the first movie, was unceremoniously fridged (which is one of my least favorite movie/TV tropes regardless of the context). Still worth seeing if you liked the original film, I guess.
Keeping Mum (2006) a British dark comedy of (ill) manners d. by Niall Johnson, with a screenply by same with a writing assist credited to, of all people, the American novelist/screenwriter Richard Russo. Not to give too much away but Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler I didn't expect the Dowager Countess to rack up such an impressive body count Not for every taste, but quite well acted throughout, with Patrick Swayze in one of his last roles as an American golf pro who gives lessons to the vicar's wife. Quite an un-Bean like performance by Atkinson as the village vicar and the worst six-a-side goalkeeper in the history of cinema.
Under sandet [Land of Mine] (2015) Shortly after the end of World War II, the British troops in Denmark and the nascent Danish army employed German POWs to clear the landmines planted by the Germans to fend off invasion. Danish sergeant Carl Rasmussen is given a dozen soldiers to clear the beach near Ringkøbing, although it's a little difficult to call them soldiers as they are all around 15 years old, give or take. Usually take. Rasmussen can't help but get closer to them, but it is a hard, hard task they have been given. This is certainly a different kind of war film - one against remorseless inanimate object that doesn't mind waiting. I was a fan of its usually pastoral pace, although given the nature of the subject it is tense and gory as well. You start to ponder questions about collective guilt and the ethics of war, and for me this was a jumping off point for a lot of reading about the technology of mines and the history of the immediate post-war. Besides the 2000 POW's used in Denmark, over 40,000 cleared minefields in France. It was against the Geneva Convention to use prisoners this way, but demining was clearly instrumental to making Europe livable again, and there are still German mines going off to this day (in fact, they found a mine on the beach while filming this movie). Excellent film.
Thor Ragnarok ~ T. Waititi Big, silly, and easily my favorite Marvel film. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ~ J. Gunn Big, silly and my least favorite Marvel film. I'm not sure the disconnect between the two. I think it may be that the fun in Thor centers around him as a character whereas the fun in Guardians is completely separate from Quill and his dull main story. Hemsworth plays off the other actors with an ease that isn't there with Pratt. Thor also seems to do a better job of showing not telling. A third of the way into Guardians, I was bored with all the exposition. Maybe once the Guardians are linked to the rest of the Marvel universe, they can get over the world-building exposition.
Blade of the Immortal (2017) Dir. Takashi Miike Manji is a disgraced former Samurai whose life now consists of taking care of his psychologically damaged younger sister Machi. He feels responsible for her mental state and cares for her as best as he can, until one day, a bounty hunter and his men catch up to him and in the ensuing battle, his sister perishes. Manji is mortally wounded after dispatching the bounty hunter and his cronies and ready to die, having nothing left to live for any more. Just before he succumbs to his wounds, an old woman who claims to be 800 years old puts what appear to be magical worms in one of his wounds, which immediately heal his body. Fifty years later, Manji is still alive and seemingly immortal, the worms still healing even the most horrific injuries he sustains during battle. On the advice of the 800 year old crone, he is sought out by Rin , a young girl who needs a bodyguard for her vendetta against Anotsu, the leader of a group of rogue swordsmen who want to unite all of the dojos or decimate those who do not bow to his will and who killed Rin's father in the process. Manji only reluctantly accepts the job, out of fear he might get attached to his new charge. This was a lot of fun. I love "13 Assassins" by the same director, but this is a very different film. In truth, "13 Assassins" is the superior film, as it works both as a samurai movie and a drama. This is far more silly at times, but no less entertaining. The 140 minute run-time is a bit self-indulgent, two hours would have been plenty to tell this story (not that it ever truly drags). Some of the fight scenes are very well done. Certain aspects of the narrative reminded me of "Logan", for obvious reasons. Apart from the two excellent leads, I thought that Erika Toda almost stole the film as Makie, the most skilled of Anotsu's warriors. Even though she is only in about four scenes in the entire film, her fight with Manji in the village is the best duel out of them all.